Foreword
Dear Readers,
Welcome to HOCHTIEF! We are pleased to present our Sustainability Report with a wealth of information about the HOCHTIEF Group and about our progress in sustainability issues.
We set ourselves very high standards in this regard and take sustainability and all related obligations very seriously. As an international construction services provider, we owe a huge responsibility by virtue of our global projects which impact on large numbers of people and on the environment. We are conscious of HOCHTIEF’s role as a corporate citizen, contributing to society in ways both big and small. Making all of this happen also calls for the right philosophy within the Group, and relies on the workforce supporting our guiding principles and making them a reality in their work. Accordingly, HOCHTIEF is strongly committed to sustainability as an employer. Through our compliance systems, we are ideally placed to deliver on that commitment. We additionally became a participant in the UN Global Compact in 2008 and are expressly committed to the Compact’s ten principles. Our Sustainability Report also serves as our Communication of Progress (COP) for the purposes of the Global Compact.
As this Report also shows, sustainability today accounts for a major share of our operating business. Our strategy is about providing solutions at every link in the infrastructure project, real estate and facility life cycle. This integrated approach supplies the ideal framework for putting sustainability into practice. Because timely planning, projectbased teamwork in construction and well-tuned project operation not only save money, but reap benefits in energy efficiency and climate protection. All over the world, we offer energy-efficient construction solutions and build power generation infrastructure using alternative energy sources. We have secured a large customer base by doing so. In the US, we lead the market in green building. As industry pioneers, we have had a major hand in shaping that market and setting standards.
Quantifiable standards are important to us because they allow fair assessment and comparison between projects. We work for this purpose with the national member councils of the World Green Building Council. In Germany, we continue to be active in the German Sustainable Building
Council, of which we were among the founder members in 2008. The first German sustainable building certifications were awarded in 2009.
We too wish to give our stakeholders a means of measuring and evaluating our performance. To this end, we not only publish facts and figures on our progress and contribution in terms of sustainability, we also have them appraised by public auditors. We closely adhere in our reporting to the Guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), which aims to make the sustainability performance of companies transparent and comparable.
We want to sustain our strong forward momentum. To make sure we do, we have once again set ourselves ambitious new targets and expect our performance to be measured by their attainment. We look forward to having you with us along the way.
We wish you an enjoyable read and will be pleased to hear your suggestions, ideas and questions.
Dr.-Ing. Herbert Lütkestratkötter, Chairman of the Executive Board